1. Field of the Invention
The specification relates to a system and method for detecting and recognizing objects in an image. In particular, the specification relates to a system and method for detecting and interpreting the content of an image using a hybrid detection recognition technique to improve recognition of objects or products depicted in the image.
2. Description of the Background Art
Products are arranged on shelves in a retail store, and the visual characteristics of the products can be very similar among products of the same category or brand. In the retail environment, there is a need for product recognition techniques to recognize a variety of products, planar and non-planar, in an image. For example, in the visual searching and matching applications used in retail context, the recognition technology needs to determine the location of product candidates on the shelf and match the detected product candidates with available images indexed in an electronic database.
Existing solutions for detecting and recognizing objects often rely on the detection and matching of feature points in the image. These feature-based approaches may yield acceptable recognition performance when a coarse description of the recognized object is sufficient. However, these existing systems are generally unable to provide a desired recognition when a fine-grained categorization and discrimination between matched candidates is required, especially in cases where similar products (e.g., products of the same category or brand) are closely positioned to each other.